Sophie Gee

I was a lit major, she continued, Phi Beta Kappa, you know, just to toot my own horn.

She laughed and no one laughed along with her.

At all, you didn't toot your own horn.

Also, you didn't imagine that acknowledging that that's what you were doing would make it OK.

So, you know, what's really fascinating about this scene is the way that there's a code beyond the code.

The thing about this sort of social world of the preppy private school that Miss Murray has...

stumbled into she can't possibly understand that you're supposed to be more sophisticated at the age of 15 than most people are at the age of sort of 45 and across this chapter various characters are being asked to say what their favorite books are and lee says that her favorite book is jane eyre great choice by the way which is a great choice lee wherever she is now is an avid fan of secret life of books yeah i think she'd really enjoy her episode

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe she is.

And Miss Moray says that her favourite book is My Antonia by Willa Cather, although that no one in the class knows who My Antonia is by.

So what Sittenfeld is doing in this section of the book is showing us with literary references what the story arcs are that the characters are supposed to be representing.

So one of the questions of this novel, which is a coming of age novel, is basically, is there only one kind of coming of age novel?

And did it get told in Jane Eyre?

and are all other novels that are rewriting The Coming of Age ultimately essentially rewritings of Jane Eyre?

And I think it's kind of an interesting question.

Once it's in the 20th century, once it's in America, once it's in the school, can you still have the psychological dynamics of a Victorian novel or has the nature of the novel completely changed?

My Antonia, it's a frontier novel.

It's a novel about...

It's a novel about settlement in the middle of the country, about pioneers, and it's a way for Miss Moray to think about herself as an outsider.

And the question, I think, that Sittenfeld is asking is can those kinds of stories, stories about people living on the frontier, people who aren't of the elite, people who aren't living on the coast and haven't gone through these educational systems, can those stories have any relationship with